Observations made since the inception of this project in 1976 indicate a very high prevalence of nutritional complications among patients hospitalized for cancer. These include weight loss, protein-calorie malnutrition and multiple vitamin deficiencies. Until recently it was not possible to document the extent of these complications statistically, nor to provide information on the effectiveness of nutritional intervention. For obvious moral and ethical reasons it has not been possible to allow nutritional imbalance to remain untreated once it has been recognized. It is now apparent that approximately one-half of patients with identifiable nutrition complications arising as a result of cancer or its therapy can receive significant benefit from aggressive nutritional intervention. During the 1980/81 year, we propose to continue to develop means to identify and treat these patients. One goal is to make the assessment of nutritional status a part of every patient's evaluation. Another goal is to create enhanced physician awareness of the role of nutrition in support of cancer patients. A third goal is continued strengthening of a nutrition-support team to aid in delivery of specialized care. The fourth goal is to collect data for computerized storage, retrieval, and analysis to study correlations between nutrition parameters, therapy, and outcome.